That night, the moon hid, the wind prowled, and the world offered its darkness to anyone bold enough to slip through it.
Jared left the Myriad Beast Sect without rustling a single leaf. Even the little Fire Unicorn that usually padded after him was ordered to stay behind. A breath later, he became little more than a pale aqua smear, a suggestion of motion folded into night air.
His mastery of spatial footwork crushed distance into mere suggestion; rivers blurred, ridgelines bent, and valleys spun backward beneath his boots as he arrowed toward the Myriad Sword Mountains—that third, lonely vertex of territory claimed by mountain, plain, and beast.
Days later, a serrated silhouette rose off the horizon, a procession of peaks so thin and cruel they resembled titanic blades rammed tip-first into the clouds.
Unlike the age-softened Myriad Beast Mountains or the gore-stained Blood-Scar Plains, the Myriad Sword Mountains radiated pure, ascetic sharpness. Unseen sword intent sliced the overcast into silvery ribbons, and even shallow breaths stung the lungs of ordinary travelers.
Jared slowed, absorbing the savage beauty, then veered toward a settlement that clung to the outer ridges like the hilt of a hidden dagger.
The place was called Greenblade Town, the largest market under Mystic Sky Sword Sect administration, a crossroads where gossip and contraband traded hands with equal ease.
Buildings of quarried blue-gray stone rose in clean, severe angles; nothing here was ornate unless simplicity itself counted as ornament. Sword cultivators moved through the streets in streams, backs straight, steps quiet, eyes glinting like whetted steel.
Even their murmurs carried the clipped certainty of a cut that could not be taken back.
Drawing a slow breath, Jared suppressed every flicker of his true power, masking himself behind the modest aura of a Level Seven Human Immortal wanderer.
As one more anonymous drifter, he drifted, apparently aimless, between stalls, his gaze casual while his hearing devoured every whispered shard of rumor, filtering through any useful information.
“You hear about Blackwind Gorge? Those Infinite Soul Demon Sect vermin hit the new spirit-stone vein again, collapsed three main mines and sent half a dozen brothers to the infirmary!”
“Cowards, the lot of them! They wait until our attention turns elsewhere, then scurry out like roaches.”
“Worse news! Scouts swear they’re massing on the edge of the Blood-Scar Plains. Supplies, fighters, and bloodlust thick enough to choke a boar. Whatever they’re planning, it’s big.”
“Big? Doesn’t take a sage to guess the target—this range, our sect. Someone needs to warn headquarters before we’re bleeding in our own courtyards.”
The anger curling through those voices pleased Jared.
Hostility at ground level meant fertile soil for fear, and fear, properly directed, became a lever.
Excellent…
The foot soldiers of the Mystic Sky Sword Sect already teetered on suspicion’s edge. All he had to do was hand their chiefs an ironclad, gleaming-with-blood proof, and the blade would finish falling.
That proof was the heart of his design, something heavy enough to make the High Elders believe, urgent enough to force their hand before second thoughts could sprout.
From the storage ring at his belt, he drew three items: a stack of pristine communication devices, an ounce of Phantom-Mold Clay able to mimic any spiritual signature, and several fractured weapons that still reeked of the Infinite Soul Demon Sect’s cold, corroding power.
Carefully, almost tenderly, Jared laid the pieces of tomorrow’s conflagration inside his cloak. The match was struck; now he simply had to let the fuse burn.
The device and the clay had come from Flaxseed long ago. As for the Infinite Soul Demon Sect artifacts, Jared carried more than a few—every one of them stolen, every one of them unmistakably authentic.
